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Wednesday, September 2, 2015

For whatever reason it's been difficult for me to write anything lately...work, life, whatever....brains in other places almost constantly. I've fallen behind and I now need to catch up on the last two events. At the end of July I was at NJMP lightning with NASA. It was HOT...I don't just mean warm, I mean f*cking hot, asphalt was 120-130 degrees. With an all paved paddock that sucked. The only change to the car since being at the same track the month before was finally putting in my 10k front springs. Oil temps were an issue as usual, managing to run in the 240 to 250 degree range all day both days. It didn't help that on Saturday I mowed some grass. In an effort to find some time on track I was backing up my turn in point for turn 3 and eventually backed it up too far leading to short cutting turn 4 because I immediately realized I would never keep it fully on track, and the 2-3-4 complex is the WORST place to go off on this track due to wall proximity. No harm no foul, but the oil cooler ate some debris and dinged up a few more fins. Other wise the car felt good, but still had a slight push in some turns which may have been me slightly over driving the street tires in the heat. Midway through Saturday I started hearing a weird ticking/tapping noise at full speed down the front stretch which was odd, but sounded like a slight rub or something. Few laps later...tick, tick, BOOM there goes my left front fender liner flying 30 feet up in the air down the front stretch. After the session all looked fine but I decided to swap over to my BFG R1's just as a precaution since the bottom edge of the fender liner contains a metal bar that could have damaged the tire. I have little experience on the R1's but the car seemed to handle them well and I was able to match my street tire best but not go faster as I am still learning the limit of those tires. The final session on Sunday was one of the best I have ever had. Was still on the R1's which were great with heat tolerance, and got to play around with some very high end cars/drivers...until I overcooked it in 7.

Overall, managed a new street tire best of of 1:17.3, which was 1.5 seconds faster than the month before with the front springs being the only change.

Unfortunately my traqmate memory was full so I don't have an actual data file for the 17.3 lap, only a 17.6. I've since sold my traqmate and upgraded to an Aim Solo.More to come...